WATERTOWN, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Lyndra, a healthcare company developing ultra long-acting oral drug
delivery technologies, announced the publication of a scientific paper
describing its novel technology in one of its earliest applications.
Lyndra’s revolutionary platform was initially developed at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the laboratory of Dr. Robert
Langer. Lyndra has begun its own development work on internal and
partner candidates. Lyndra’s technology, which redefines ultra-long
acting oral therapeutic delivery, has the potential to transform care by
improving effectiveness, reducing side effects, and creating substantial
savings for patients, the healthcare system, and governments.

“Current
extended and sustained release technologies achieve therapeutic serum
levels for up to 12-24 hours. Lyndra’s technology stands alone by
pushing this timeline out to more than a week. The implications for
patients are tremendous.”

Data on the early use of this technology for the treatment of malaria
was published today in Science Translational Medicine. The publication
entitled “Oral Ultra Long-Acting Drug Delivery: Single Encounter
Ivermectin for Malaria Elimination,” describes an ingested capsule
that, upon entering the stomach, assumes a geometry that prevents
passage through the GI tract, enabling prolonged gastric residence. The
Lyndra technology can deliver small molecule therapies for seven days
and potentially longer, and, upon the predetermined breakdown of its
structure, can safely pass through the gastrointestinal tract. The study
demonstrated the long-acting controlled release of ivermectin, a
treatment to interrupt the vector transmission of malaria, for up to 14
days.

“This technology promises to rewrite the definition of ultra-long acting
oral therapies,” said Dr. Robert Langer, Lyndra co-founder, MIT
Institute Professor, and corresponding author on the paper. “Current
extended and sustained release technologies achieve therapeutic serum
levels for up to 12-24 hours. Lyndra’s technology stands alone by
pushing this timeline out to more than a week. The implications for
patients are tremendous.”

“People around the world depend on medications that require taking a
pill every single day or even multiple times a day,” said Amy Schulman,
a co-founder of Lyndra and its CEO. “That approximately 50% of patients
in the developed world do not take their medicines as prescribed, a
statistic that is even more challenging in the developing world, has a
demonstrable effect on healthcare outcomes and a cost estimates to the
US healthcare system alone of over $100 billion annually. Lyndra’s long
acting technology should make a real dent in this protracted problem and
help change the lives of millions of patients who feel tethered to the
daily pill.”

Schulman noted that Lyndra’s system offers a number of clinically
meaningful benefits including convenient, once weekly (or less frequent)
oral dosing, improvements in patient adherence, near constant
therapeutic serum levels with more predictable pharmacodynamics, and
potential of side effect reductions due to decreased variability of drug
concentration. Safety mechanisms to prevent obstruction of food,
perforation, mucosal injury and other adverse events are built into the
design of Lyndra’s polymer based system.

Lyndra’s next applications extend beyond infectious disease, including
chronic diseases such as psychiatric disease, renal disease and
addiction. Lyndra will initiate clinical trials for its primary internal
product in mid 2017. Lyndra is also partnering with a select number of
leading pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical companies to develop
ultra-long acting oral products of their proprietary small molecule
therapies. Each product will undergo pre-clinical and clinical testing
to satisfy regulatory requirements before being made available to the
public.

About LyndraLyndra aims to fundamentally change the way
patients take medicines through the development of oral,
ultra-long-acting, sustained release oral therapies that drastically
improve healthcare outcomes. The Lyndra technology was developed at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in the laboratory of Dr. Robert
Langer in collaboration with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Lyndra formulations transform medications taken daily or more frequently
into a weekly or monthly dose, promising to improve patient adherence as
well as to optimize the pharmacokinetic profile of the dosage form.